Benched
by Some Magician
Summary: P4A. After spending some years apart for life and college, Yukari and Junpei wait as back-up with Fuuka in a Kirijo limousine while the other S.E.E.S. members head into the TV World. The trio of unofficial Shadow Operatives complain, brood a little, and eat Chinese food, but as the night wears on, they come face to face with a threat unlike any they've ever seen in Tartarus.
1. On the Evening of May 4, 2012

Hey, welcome to _Benched_! _Benched_ primarily concerns itself with Persona 3 characters during the events of Persona 4 Arena-but it does cross over with some elements and characters from Persona 1/2, particularly 2. Now, _luckily_, if you haven't played Persona 2, the relevant bits are small, but _unluckily_, if you have played Persona 2, the relevant bits are small.

Real Quick Forenote: Chāhan is Japanese fried rice, subuta is Japanese sweet-and-sour chicken, gyōza are steamed or fried dumplings, and banbanji is strips of meat and vegetables served cold in a sauce, kind-of like a salad. Chinese restaurants in Japan don't serve Chinese food like American-Chinese joints do. They serve dishes that mix Japanese and Chinese cuisine together. (I've added some items to Aiya's menu for ficcing purposes since they are mostly a ramen bar.) Go wiki it—but not when you're hungry.

**Warning:** This story contains a fair bit of adult language and some fairly intense violence.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Benched**

**Chapter 1: On the Evening of May 4, 2012**

* * *

May, temperate and newly green, warmed the junkyard, and the parked Toyota Century's engine purred low, temperature-controlling even the seats of its passenger cabin while giving off only the most responsible of vehicular emissions. The bank of computers inside, busily networking with the Kirijo mainframe just moments ago, now stood black and sleeping. A minimalist, red Kirijo logo faded in and out on the central monitor. The seats fit along the cabin in a rich, leather-upholstered 'L', its eight-passenger efficiency accommodating just three riders now.

"I can't believe she drove us all the way out here to wait in the car," Junpei said. He threw himself back against the very cushy seats of the Kirijo limousine. The leather, and probably memory foam or something else swanky like that, caught him without holding a grudge. He slouched down in the seat, glaring up at the dark moon-roof. _'And I flew ten hours for this!'_

"She's trying to be considerate of our schedules," Yukari snapped, "especially during an _emergency._"

"It's okay, Yukari-chan," Fuuka said. "Junpei-kun is just a little cranky because he had a long trip."

Yukari rolled her eyes. _'I had a long trip too.'_ "My gosh, Tatsumi Port's just so far—"

"LAX," Junpei corrected, sitting up straight, "to Tokyo, and then a red-eye out to Yasoinaba." He looked out the tinted window up at the country sky, yellowing with sunset—he'd never even _heard_ of Yasoinaba before this.

"I haven't been off a plane or a train in almost eighteen hours—and I have jet-lag like you would not _believe_."

At first, Yukari said nothing.

"Why were you in America?"

"I go to college there. Why else do you think?"

"When did that happen?"

"Last winter."

"Why America?"

"I'm doing a year abroad there and I _like it_! What's with the third degree!?"

"Maybe now isn't the time for this," Fuuka interrupted. "You look like you need sleep, Junpei-kun."

"I _do_ need sleep. It's 3AM where I live, and it's only _7PM_ here."

"Why don't you take a nap? We're probably not going anywhere anytime soon."

"I'll do that—sorry about the bitchin', Fuuka."

"Don't worry about it."

"Maybe Mitsuru has some—_tea_ or something in here—" Yukari started.

"Nah. I'm not gonna take anything in case we get called in." Junpei dropped down horizontally along the limo seat, the chill of internal air-conditioning meant for cooling asses prickling the hairs on his arms and shoulders. He shivered, fidgeted, finally settled on his back, and adjusted his hat, knocking the cap-brim over his eyes.

"About that," Fuuka started prudently. "Mitsuru doesn't know what to expect. If we don't hear from her in twelve hours, we're to call in the other teams. Nanjo-san will make the call on which team goes in next."

"So, we might not go in at all?" Junpei asked from under his hat.

"It will take the others time to get here," Fuuka explained, "but in the best case scenario, we won't."

Junpei sighed and pulled through an agonized stretch. These seats were not meant for sleeping; he could feel the stiffness already clogging his bones, but just lying down on _anything _made his head light and his eyelids heavy.

"Good thing it's summer," he said in a breath as a soft night began to come early—just for him. "Not missing anything important."

[- - -]

Junpei slept heavily and without a sound, his baseball cap tipped over his eyes and the bridge of his nose, along the long arm of the 'L'. His jittering, dreaming movements might have attracted Yukari's eye—if he ever moved, anyway.

"He sleeps like he's dead."

Fuuka looked up from the polished screen of her tablet.

"Junpei-kun was really tired," she said, keeping her voice low.

"He's not gonna wake up if we don't whisper."

"Why bother him, though?"

A webpage passed over the tablet-screen and then another, the instantaneous leafing of an electric book. Another breath, easy and slumbering, moved through Junpei's body.

"Hey, Fuuka," Yukari said, looking away from him finally. "Did you know he went to America?"

"No, he didn't tell me."

"So, it wasn't just me then?"

"No, it wasn't just you, Yukari-chan. Does that make you worry?"

"What? No, just—I was wondering why Mitsuru brought him all the way here from America. That's not really like her." Yukari knit her brows as she said it, her own 'summons' that morning still fresh her mind.

The store still smelled of morning and new, fresh-of-the-factory clothing flush with the riot of perfumes over in the Beauty department when she got on her early-bird shift at Mays, Junes's more trendy and urban younger sister-chain (sans grocery, of course) for city-living, disposable fashionistas. The sunlight cut brightly and almost unbearably through her department, and Yukari had worked half-way through merchandizing a rack of gauzy lavender blouses shot through with silver insets when a man with an ear-piece approached her.

She had stopped in the middle of her work then, knowing there wasn't any point in continuing. After all, the Shadow Operatives' front men _always_ had ear-pieces, and they _never_ came for ladies' wear-it-and-toss-it fashion.

The gentleman had been especially tight-lipped on the way to the train, but there was no security like Kirijo security, and not even twenty minutes later, Yukari was on a super express to Yasoinaba. An hour into her trip, Mitsuru finally sent her an e-mail, all duly apologetic and formal while brushing just the tip of the unfolding situation and promising more details when she 'and the others' arrived.

'The others'—that had sounded so promising just a few hours ago.

But now, they weren't going; barely any of them were going, and Kei Nanjo, the heir of the Nanjo Group and co-commander, technically, of the Shadow Operatives would make the call if they went in at all. It ground on Yukari's patience—'_What's deal, Mitsuru? Are you really going to jerk us around like this?'_

"I think Junpei-kun didn't really tell anyone that he was going," Fuuka said, shaking Yukari back after a moment's silence. "Mitsuru probably assumed he hadn't left the country, and Kirijo did the rest."

She let her growing dissatisfaction with Mitsuru lie for the moment.

"That really bothers me," Yukari said, changing the subject. "He just _up and left_ and didn't tell _any of us_."

"Akihiko-kun went traveling too—"

"Akihiko told you—"

A somewhat flustered Fuuka smiled anyway and continued: "But why does it bother you? Did you and Junpei-kun go to the same university?"

"No. No, I don't think we did—if we did, we didn't hang out."

"Ah. Well, it's not really surprising that he went to America. He always liked those action movies."

"Yeah, he always did. Sorry, Fuuka, this all just feels weird to me. We're here first and we're not even going in? I know we're 'unofficial' Shadow Operatives but—"

"I think Mitsuru and Nanjo-san are still _getting used_ to working together."

"Number One and Zero butting heads still?"

Fuuka giggled. "I suppose so."

"I can see why; that guy didn't want S.E.E.S. to be official—"

Fuuka shook her head, a sympathetic look on her face. "I don't think it's like that. Nanjo-san and the others have been persona users for much longer than any of us. I don't think he thought it was right to recruit users so young—"

"Aigis was recruited—"

"You know it's not that simple, Yukari-chan—even Akihiko-kun's not official."

"He was so pissed at her over that."

"As much as he gets with Mitsuru—"

"I think he _should_ be mad. They can't just come in and tell us what to do! What do they know about anything—"

"Nanjo-san and the others have fought shadows too—"

"They didn't fight what _we_ fought, Fuuka—"

"But _Mitsuru_ agreed with him, and so did Suou-san," Fuuka cut in. "About the unofficial status. Until we were ready, and then, only if we wanted it."

Yukari huffed and looked away. Speaking matter-of-factually, she felt no more fond of Katsuya Suou than she did of Kei Nanjo. But unlike Nanjo, Yukari had initially found nothing to dislike about Suou during their brief meeting, no more than an hour or so, in a sleek, red meeting room in the Kirijo Spire on the Tatsumi Port skyline. Suou was stoic but pleasant, all dressed in lawful lines and lapels, and her impression of him soured quickly enough.

But Kaoru Saga, however, was older than nearly everyone in the room, and had leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking.

"Suou, we're getting old," Saga said, his voice gritty but even, and his eyes unknowable behind his shades. "And I don't give a shit if the kids fight."

Suou bristled thoroughly.

"It's not about 'giving a shit'," he countered reactively. He calmed and touched his red-lensed glasses further up his nose. "It's about doing right by their futures. Involvement with these operations comes at a high cost. Those with the ability to leave, should." Suou stood up from the glassy table then, a vase of red roses contrasting the smoky color of his suit; the debate settled as far as _he _seemed to be concerned. His eyes shifted from Saga to Yukari, or maybe Akihiko, or Fuuka, to any or all of them. "And if this is really your road, it will come for you."

Yukari made a fist; like that last bit was supposed to be _comforting_ or something!

_'He doesn't know a damn thing about me! I've never had the 'ability' to leave any of this! I've even tried running—'_ Back in the limo, she paused in the angry rush of her thoughts, the momentum of her emotions carrying on without her. _'But I want to fight now!'_ Truthfully, she knew the 'luxury' to decide meant much more to others than it ever did to her. She needed no decision anymore; she would fight—always—_for him_. He died protecting them, _all_ of them, and he wasn't going to hold that thing back alone.

_'But I'm not going to kid myself, I'm pretty…ordinary,'_ for a persona user, anyhow. She and Isis made for no unfound prodigy after all, and the small network of persona-users Nanjo brought to the table when he proposed a 'merging' of the Kirijo and Groups' 'invisible' departments made for the more experienced and powerful group by far. The competition pretty much trounced her (and frankly, much of S.E.E.S.'s) abilities, but for Fuuka, Yukari admitted to herself begrudgingly, even Nanjo's network made exceptions. Fuuka's abilities of perception, detection, and long-distance communication were simply unparalleled and irreplaceable. Of all of the remaining, and human, S.E.E.S. members, Fuuka had been the only one Mitsuru had directly solicited for official membership. In the privacy of the marble and glass corridor following the red room meeting, Fuuka declined that offer under the conditions of Suou's and Nanjo's discussion and her soft-spoken wishes for her education, her future. Yukari—standing just inside the massive elevator walled in mirrors and gold—had heard her gentle, politely regretful 'no'.

_'If you had asked me, I'd have said 'yes'! I'd have said 'yes' on the spot,'_ she had thought back then, almost too angry to see as she stormed into the elevator and slammed the 'close doors' button. Not Mitsuru, not Fuuka, not _anybody_ would see her this pissed off; this anger was _hers_. _'But you're not going to ask me.'_ She wanted to kick something, but that elevator had been too obnoxiously _fragile_.

"I know she did," Yukari said, resigned and returning to the present at last. The sky had finally grown dark, blackening the windows completely. "I'm just—mad today. Why did she bring us here?"

Fuuka's eyes dropped to the floor.

"I get the feeling what's happening now is pretty big, bigger than most things she's dealt with since…back then," she said slowly. "And if it _is_ big, I think she wants the friends she trusts most nearby—official or not."

"You're just trying to make me feel better," Yukari said, resting her elbow against the veneered door and her cheek on her hand.

"Did it work?" Fuuka asked, smiling. Yukari cracked just the smallest smile in return.

"A little."

[- - -]

At 8:25PM, just before the Aiya Chinese Diner shut down _all_ its operations, even its generous evening delivery service, the guy watching the empty counter got a call from a unfamiliar area-code and a girl with a soft, soft voice. She rang like a bell, small and light, in his ear across the line, and she wasn't a regular, not at all.

"Excuse me, but do you deliver to street corners?"

"Depends on the street corner, miss," the head-waiter said. The soft-spoken girl's particular street corner wasn't far out of town, about half-a-block off the main throughway lacing through the center of the Yasoinaba region. Of course, the only thing out that way was an electronics dump—but his guy could meet her there, if that's where she wanted her Aiya's! He heard her laugh lightly at his certainty before she agreed and ordered a large chāhan and subuta with sides of banbanji and fried gyōza. She paid with a debit card, and the head-waiter dragged out the card-processor from where it gathered dust beneath the register. The Junes going up had forced Inaba, and its local businesses, to come out of their loafering and finally warm up to plastic money, but the Aiya Diner had been there for three-and-a-half generations and liked tradition.

"That'll be that, Yamagishi-san," the head-waiter said, the machine finally satisfied with its fare of serial numbers and personal information. "We'll see ya in twenty-five to thirty minutes at your street corner."

"Thank you very much."

[- - -]

Junpei woke up long enough to half-order in a daze but did not wake up again for the actual food. After some idle searching through the cabin, Yukari discovered a concealed and empty beverage well beneath the computer-bank to stash the left-overs in.

"It'll be a little cold," Fuuka said, closing up the well again. "But he'll have something when he gets up." Yukari nodded and sat back down in the short bar of the 'L' seat.

"It's almost 10," she said, pulling her legs up and sitting side-saddle—sort-of—on the seat.

"I know," Fuuka said as she went through the collection of briefcases stashed neatly between the seat and the computer bank, two empty laptop cases and an aluminum suitcase. Fuuka pulled the steel-colored case up on the seat with her and turned the combination easily; Yukari matched the numbers in muscle-memory: '03-05-10'. "I'm starting to wonder a little about them. Are you tired?"

"Not really. Did she bring those with her?"

The lock gave way, and Fuuka opened the case.

"Oh—yes," Fuuka said. Three evokers gleamed in a bed of black foam. Yukari reached for hers without asking, knowing _her_ evoker immediately by the familiar heft in her hand, the easy fit of the grip to her fingers. Mitsuru had taken care of it since its decommission. The device was very clean and still _lightly_ personalized with the S.E.E.S. banner engraved along the barrel and beneath it, in stylistically smaller script: '_TAKEBA YUKARI'._

She put her finger experimentally to the trigger as if to fire.

_'I haven't seen this thing in ten months,'_ Yukari thought. She released the trigger, grasped the evoker along the barrel, and set it back in its foam indentation.

She remembered what she said when she held it last, after her _friend_ left her to freeze under the cold stares of Kirijo security as an agent stopped her in the lobby, like a common shoplifter, with the summer city and sky undisturbed outside. The young man, with the sunglasses and the ear-piece, had escorted her politely, _awkwardly_, back into the elevator and up seventeen floors to Mitsuru's office and apartments. The double doors had parted onto her golden parlor, draped in classical red and trimmed in old world wood, with a white and modernist sofa curved around a low coffee table, its lamp, and, true to Mitsuru, a gold and red enameled tea set. Mitsuru herself presided over the room with the imperial grace most characteristic of her, but that day, it wavered—as if she had expected Yukari to be upset, but perhaps not _this_ upset.

"Did I steal something or what?" Yukari shot after her escort left. Mitsuru gently stepped over the question.

"Yukari, please sit—"

"I'm gonna stand."

Mitsuru frowned, her eyes turned aside and her arms crossed over her chest.

"I—I realize you are angry, but we need to discuss this before you leave."

"What's there to talk about? You and _the others_," she spat, "don't want us to fight. I get it. Can I go

now—"

"I have reasons for that decision that I want you to hear—will you please sit?"

"You can tell me standing. I'm _not_ going to be staying long."

Mitsuru relented, dropping her arms to her sides.

"I would be honored to fight with all of you again," Mitsuru started slowly. "There are no better allies—"

"Not even Suou-san back there?"

Mitsuru lowered her eyes and did not answer—_again_.

"I agree with Nanjo and Suou _because_ there are no better allies, and I want…more for the rest of you. I don't want all of you to have to carry this burden with me for the rest of your lives."

Yukari took a breath and gripped her hands in fists before they could begin to shake.

"I've got a mom already, thanks," she said. "And I don't need you to want anything for me—"

Mitsuru's expression tore, exposing a sad rawness in her eyes.

"That isn't what—"

"_No_! How could you—how could you just _decide that_ for _me_? I thought we were—"

"Of course, we _are_ friends," Mitsuru said sincerely. "I apologize—"

"No, you don't," Yukari said sharply. "You _just don't!_ You can't take _that_ back." She paused, an uncomfortable hitch building in her throat as she dug briefly in her purse. "But you can take _this_ back." Her evoker clattered on the lacquered table, rattling the tea. "I can't get into trouble without it. I've still got a lot of stuff to do," she told her stiffly. "I'm going now. Bye."

She had left the parlor in a cold storm then, and no guardsmen followed her to the elevator or through the lobby.

"Mine's here too, and Junpei-kun's," Fuuka said, her voice suddenly cutting through Yukari's memories. "Yukari-chan, are you okay? Are you sure you're not tired?"

"Maybe a little," Yukari said distantly, "but I don't know if I should sleep—"

"Why don't you? I'll stay up and listen. Junpei-kun will wake up in a few hours, and I'll switch with him."

"You sure?"

Fuuka nodded, taking out her tablet again.

"Don't worry about it, Yukari-chan."

[- - -]

Yukari awoke to a cellphone going off in half-darkness and a whispered but distinct "Shit." A door swung open, shut, and then nothing. She stirred, her brain still stuffy and slow, and an unfamiliar hooded jacket slid off her shoulders. A solitary street-lamp stood out in the yard, spilling stark, yellow light through the dim window and in a slice across the floor and the empty bench beside her. She sat up dizzily, squinting in the harsh light, and picked up the coat, rolling it in a lump on her lap. Fuuka appeared like a still, small ghost in her vision, curled up and sleeping out of the streetlight with a knitted shawl drawn up to her chin. The shawl covered her like a web, the ivory yarn twisted into wide, lacy gaps.

_'What time is it?'_ Yukari abandoned the jacket and groped for her purse in the dark. She finally grasped the bag from the shadow and pulled the zipper, her cellphone coming to life from the rummaging. 5:07AM on May 5, 2012, shined up at her face with soothing, lavender light. _'I've been asleep a pretty long time.'_

She closed her cell; the twelve-hour deadline would come in less than two hours.

Obviously, if she'd been allowed to sleep so long, no word had come about the mission, and that meant nothing good and nothing bad. Yukari pocketed her phone and zipped up her purse again, tucking it back under the seat. She stood up in the limo, mindful of its low ceiling, and caught scraps of English from the back of the car—some words she recognized and some she didn't. At least, Junpei definitely _sounded _awake.

[- - -]

This part always sounded cooler in manga.

"Hey, babe," Junpei said to the cool night and the smartphone. The call had come from what had quickly become 'back home' to him, but her specific location was Pasadena, California, where the white cement and black asphalt blazed and burned beside manicured, irrigated lawns in the early summer sun.

"Mushi-mushi," said the answering digital voice, fuzzy with the literal ocean of distance and even fuzzier with the amateur Japanese. She exaggerated the quick 'mu's into slow 'moo's. "Daijoubu desuka?"

Junpei smiled and answered her back in English.

"Everything's all right over here. Your accent sounds funny when you say that."

"I'm _trying_," she said, cutting back to English herself. "And you should hear how you say 'babe'."

"Hey, I'm teasing you."

"I know, 'baabey'." Then she paused, dramatic, and fateful, and unaware of it. "So, why did you have to take off all of a sudden?"

Junpei sighed; yeah, this part _always_ sounded cooler in manga.

[- - -]

Yukari stepped out into the nighttime humidity, and, like an old, cold, and rather damp man on a train, the air immediately felt up her leg and lingered too long on her bare shoulders.

_'Oh yuck,_' she thought and ducked back inside for the jacket.

A moment later, Yukari shivered still. The moon hung low and pale on the horizon, casting a silver sheen on the abandoned refrigerators and the dull screens of useless televisions stacked in pillars and pyramids. It was too late for crickets but too early for birds, and ribs of clouds, and the winking pinprick of a satellite, passed overhead without a sound.

"…think I can fly home the day after…" found her ears and her mind organized the fast, casual but somewhat damaged (by too much or too little experience) English into a crisper grammar and vocabulary she could parse together so late at night and so far from a classroom.

"…let you know as soon as I'm leaving." And then, his voice deliberately sank away into the night's soundlessness. On the final note of the muffled, muted exchange, there was a private, sentimental phrase, an expression not meant for bystanders, even dead refrigerators, and Yukari wrapped her hands in the cuffs of her jacket's too-long sleeves and dropped those words from her translation.

The conversation ended with a very discrete _beep._ Yukari made her entrance, kicking a length of warped antenna out of her way. Junpei jumped at the noise and turned in his spot up on the trunk of Mitsuru's limousine, his sneakers dangling over the license plate.

"Oh, hey, Yuka-tan," he said with a voice for old if distant friends. He scooted over on the trunk, but she declined with a wave of her hand.

"What time did you wake up?" she asked, leaning on the limo instead.

"About 2:30?"

"Did you or Fuuka hear anything?"

"Nothing yet."

"There's not a lot of time left—"

"We just gotta wait until 7."

"6:45," Yukari corrected. Junpei nodded and hopped off the trunk, the car rocking gently with his weight.

"I had a dream I ordered fried gyōza," he said, putting his hands in his back pockets. "Guess I wasn't dreaming."

"Yeah. We saved you some banbanji too, since that's supposed to be cold."

"Thanks."

"So, I haven't seen you in a while," Yukari said before the junkyard could grow uncomfortably still around them. "What's it like living in America? An action movie?"

"Nah, it's kinda better. Nothing blows up. Much."

"So, why did—"

"Hey, d'you hear that?"

"Hear what—"

The thing Junpei heard sounded again, louder this time, much louder, and sharp pops and electric fizzing cracked the quiet junkyard. Broken, ultraviolet bursts flared at the edge of vision.

"What is that—"

"It's coming from over there," Junpei said. They turned in the direction of the sounds and light and stepped around a bank of dead televisions. At the back of a long corridor of refrigerators and near the top of a far junk heap, an ancient, tube television crackled, sputtering sparks as its knobs wretched around its dials in crazy circles, the antenna seizing as flashes of static filled the screen and blinked out of existence just as fast again. Smoke, and a distinct smell of CRTs burning, leaked from behind the glass face-plate as it rattled in the frame, cracks building in the corners. A long fissure tore down the center of the screen, finally cracking the box apart in loud snap.

The yard stilled again.

"That was weird—" Yukari started.

Another television shuddered, and the screen exploded. A storm of them suddenly multiplied across the junkyard, defunct televisions blazing to life in intense rainbows of dead channels as the monitors overheated, cracked open, and vomited tubes and wires through their ragged portals. The entrails twisted and convulsed, sparks hopping from the ribbons of disemboweled tubing, an eerie greenness bleeding out into earth.

"What the hell's going on—" Junpei's words caught in his throat.

There was a smell of blood on the air, thick, and rusty, and rolling over the hills of metal and electronic scrap. The toxic greenness from the guts of the TVs pooled, lacing into the soil, wilting the spring grass, and turning up deep, red puddles in its wake. It crept up the tumbled electronics and touched the sky, and a single drop polluted all of heaven, dying the half-moon an unholy yellow as it swelled, smothering the stars and filling the vault of the sky.

"_How?_" Yukari gasped. "It's not even midnight—"

"Where are the evokers—are they in the car—"

"Of course they are!"

A puddle of darkness gathered in the empty face of a ruined TV. It trembled and flopped out of the frame, landing in a sick-sounding, shivering pile. It stilled; watery, red eyes meeting together from across the puddle as melted arms stretched out from the mass, the pointed hands dripping blackness as a mouth yawned open.

"We're—we're gonna need 'em," Junpei said, taking a step back. "Back to the car!"

A pile of junk erupted, a massive shadow tearing down the mountain of scrap metal and throwing up a rain of shrapnel and cellphones. It shook off the last of the grime, keyboards, CD players, and a toaster oven twisted into its body. Smaller shadows, matted with curling phone cables, dropped off of it in tangles of eyes and arms.

"They're—they're _everywhere_," Yukari said, pulling close to Junpei. "I've never seen this many—not even in Tartarus—"

"We gotta get Fuuka—"

"We're almost there—"

Yukari reached for the door-handle, and the limousine buckled, its black exterior suddenly slick and sweating in the sickly moonlight. A limb, long and boneless, slithered underneath the skin of the car along the solitary passenger door. The car shook and distorted, long arms budding from the bumper and counterpanes. The tentacles rolled and twisted, the skin of the car lying over them like a primordial sac, as they gathered in muscular knots and pressed at the thinning film. The film finally split open, with a burst of foul air, and the limo dissolved in a mass of slippery limbs, the metal bones of the car ripping up through the knotting feelers, and the intact windshields and windows glowing like pieces of bright plate armor on the quivering body.

Yukari's handle dropped off the swimming pile of tentacles and steamed in a pool of sludge.

"_Holy shit—_what the hell even is _that_—"

"_Fuuka's in there! _We've gotta do something—"

"I think—I think we can take out the windows!" Junpei said as the limo's silver grill warped and split into a mouthful of teeth.

"How are you going to _get_ to the windows?!" Yukari shouted, the nest of tentacles fanning open.

"Uh—I dunno yet," Junpei said. He pulled down a 38-inch flatscreen, the frame snapping at his feet, and tossed a broken rice-cooker away as he looked for something he could heft—reasonably. The tentacles gathered and flowed in tides along the phantom shape of the car, their arms closing ranks over the vulnerable windows.

"I was kinda just gonna run up there, and break the rear-window with—with—Aha!" Junpei dragged a fat, old 17-inch TV from the pile. "With _this_!"

"Just _run up there?_ With _that_?"

"You got any better ideas?"

Yukari didn't. _'Fuuka…'_

"I'm going—"

"Don't—don't do anything _stupid _in there!"

"I'll be—right back," Junpei told her, holding on the TV tightly with both arms. "Go—_hide_ or something."

He ran, his arms already burning with the forty pounds of dead CRT, into the cloud of tentacles and anchored one foot on the remnants of the limousine's bumper and pulled up the other, dragging the TV up onto where the trunk would be, theoretically. His foot slipped hard on a stray, shadowy limb as it slithered away, the TV flying up and into his chin.

"_Shit."_ Junpei winced, hanging on as the TV wedged against what was left of the trunk bed, the metallic tang of blood hitting his tongue and seeping past his teeth. Gutsier tentacles crept around him, wrapping his arms.

"_Get the hell off!_" Junpei yelled with a sharp and violent shake of his arm, the lesser tentacles breaking into lifeless slime. He gripped the TV and stood up, the car _sinking_ beneath him. _'I wonder how far I can sink into this…stuff,_' he thought as he looked for his old hold on the TV again, the rearview window only a toss away. The body of the car bent freely beneath him, sucking on his shoes as an otherworldly chill leaked through his socks. _'Okay, no more thinking about that.'_

He lifted the TV high, as high as he could, burn in every muscle of his shoulders, and dropped. It fell heavily, cobwebbing the glass as it rolled off and into the tentacles.

The car _screamed_, and its dumb, panicked tentacles swarmed, groping blindly for something to seize and twist. Junpei ducked down out of the roiling cloud, reared back, and threw his fist and forearm through the battered shell of the window.

_'I got shot in the stomach,'_ Junpei reminded himself. i_'And it hurt way more than this—'/i_ He gritted his teeth and then let out a mangled "_Damnit_!" anyway as stars of pain lit in his eyes, the teeth of tempered glass knifing into his skin. He pulled back again, his arm speckled with shards of glass and bright beads of blood, and struck a second time, the last of the window caving into the cabin. He slung his arm into the space, the frayed edges of the window breaking into his upper arm, and pulled himself out of the snarl of tentacles.

Junpei fell into blackness, moist and pulsing as if it drew breath, with his injured arm cradled against his chest. He blinked wildly, the yellow moon hanging above him in strange slices as tentacles striped across it, closing the gap of light.

A drop of wetness struck his cheek, touching just the edge of his lip, and Junpei cursed and shot up, wiping the stuff away. It clung sticky and syrupy to his thumb. The black, ichorous stuff leaked from the roof, dripping down the walls and the shattered faces of the trio of computers.

"Damn, it's like something's stomach in here," Junpei muttered, covering his mouth and nose with his t-shirt, the infected smell of the tight chamber almost too much to breathe in. The stink flayed his nose alive as his lungs tightened fiercely.

"Fuuka?" he called into the cabin, the hot, heavy squeeze of the place eating his voice. He took a step forward, the moist floor still giving beneath him as the windows vanished into dark, fleshy holes above the vague shapes of the seats. He tried again.

"Fuuka!—"

"Junpei-kun?"

Her voice came as it always seemed to in emergencies, an airy whisper rapping gently at the edges of his mind.

"Oh, thank God! Fuuka—you okay? Where are you?"

"I'm here. I'm all right," Fuuka responded. "I have the evokers—but I'm stuck."

"Stuck? All right! I'm coming! Stay there!"

"I will."

"Yeah, yeah, that was dumb," Junpei said, fighting the drag of the floor. "Anyway, I'm coming."

He slugged through the quicksand floor, and reached her after a few fucking hard steps through the tissue and slime swallowing his legs. Fuuka sat nearly where he had left her not even a half-hour ago, curled against the wall of the car's stomach. A pale light wrapped her, and it broke into the misty, peacock-eyed segments of Juno's wings as her six golden eyes glowed like a mask over Fuuka's face. She clutched an aluminum briefcase to her breast. Her eyes opened wide in the mask of Juno's protection, but her limbs held fast, bound in ethereal web.

"Okay, I'm here," Junpei said, bracing his hands on the wet, mushy seat and pulling himself up out of the flesh. "Any idea how I get you out?"

"I—I'm not sure," Fuuka said, her voice a wavering echo. "I can't move. When the enemy appeared, Juno put up a seal, and I woke up like this."

Junpei grinned. "Way to go—sleeping through that." She might have smiled, but worry took it quickly.

"Juno won't respond now—" Fuuka's voice caught, and she swallowed. "I can't make her take down the seal."

"D'you think she'd chill out if I took you outside?" Junpei suggested. "I could carry you back—"

Fuuka's face fell, the membrane around her suddenly clouded, Juno's eyes flaring brighter.

"I don't think we can go back the way you came in, Junpei-kun," she paused, and her lip trembled. "But if we don't do something _soon_, you'll—oh, you'll—" The vapor around her intensified, clouding her face as Juno's wings curled tighter around her.

"Fuuka!" Junpei grabbed her shoulders, and she streamed intangibly through his fingers. He dropped his hands in his lap. "Fuuka," he started again seriously, and a light note broke in his voice for just a word. "Hey—are you crying?"

"Yes," she admitted quietly, a teary shine in her eyes. She gasped, the tears slipping away as her eyes widened. "Junpei-kun, you're bleeding!"

"Oh yeah," he said, remembering his arm. "I broke the window." The darts of glass glittered brightly and darkly at once; he tensed the muscle along his forearm, stinging pricks lighting up his nerves.

"You have to go," Fuuka told him. "They're coming—through the window—"

"I don't care, I'm getting you outta here—" He cut off abruptly, a lightless snake wrapped around his ankle and pulled. It had brothers flooding in the shattered rear window, slithering and slipping over one another, and tangling in a twitching knot of their own bodies.

"Junpei-kun!" Fuuka screamed, Juno's barrier whiting her out almost entirely. "Junpei-kun, please! Please run! I can't help you—"

Junpei slammed hard on the dank floor, rippled and bumbled like a tongue, and every wound in his body complained like new. He gasped and shuddered, leaning unconsciously on his battered arm, as hot pain shot through the limb. He rolled over onto his other, mostly-okay shoulder and heard _them_ rustle and creep from the snarl at the window.

"Fuuka, Fuuka—hey—" Junpei sat up and threw a fist into the arm throttling his leg. "It's—it gets worst when you're scared—I can't see you anymore when you're scared—" The arm found a mouth to shriek with and retreated. "You—you gotta calm down."

But others filled the gap. Junpei stood up, ropes of shadow flinging from the window and snapping tight around his free arms.

"I—I know this looks real bad right n—" Junpei's voice broke in a sharp and strangled hack, a tentacle strapping his throat. He grabbed at the garrote and pulled with both hands, the shadow squealing as the limb splintered apart, dissolving in black dust. Junpei gasped and coughed, almost dropping to his knees. His voice steadied again, and he said hoarsely: "But—but I'm gonna get you outta here! This—this isn't how we die—we're not getting killed by fucking tentacles!"

The shell thinned, Juno's face becoming a pale ghost, and Fuuka's arms loosened on the aluminum case. Junpei struggled a step back to her side, amputated tatters of blackness still clutching his shoulders. Further back, the window shivered, totally black and totally alive with them. They dropped from the window with hisses.

Her shell tightened, and Junpei's legs failed him under the weight of sudden and brutal reinforcements.

"Fuuka, I'm—I'm gonna get you out." He dragged his body closer. "Just—grab my hand—"

* * *

Well, that was happy! But next chapter? Next chapter, shit is gonna get _real_. Now, chapter 2 will go up on 10/29/2012, and the third and final chapter will follow on 11/5-unless it's not done. Chapter 2 is already done, so that's not going to be delayed, of course, but Chapter 3 is being a pistol. So, do come back and check in.

Also, my beta is the talented gentleman, fall_into_life. This fic wouldn't be here without him and all the time he's given to editing my work and talking me out of writing any _Resident Evil_ fanfic. Kudos, and thanks, to you, fall_into_life!

Peace, readers! o/ - SM


	2. In the Dark Hour of May 5, 2012

_(This story is also posted at Ao3 under the same title and pen-name if you prefer to read there. Also, the story seems prone to vanishing line-breaks right now-even if I write the HTML code myself. :/ I'm sorry about that.)_

* * *

**Benched**

**Chapter 2: In the Dark Hour of May 5, 2012**

* * *

Yukari waited, and the yellow moon above her did not move, frozen at a celestial 12 o'clock. She stood on top of a rusting, steel refrigerator above a crowd of shadows tumbling over themselves to reach her. Some tried to climb, throwing sloppy arms up the slick, steeled sides of her perch before they plopped pathetically back into the sopping mob.

A short distance away, the car had curled in on itself, coiling its arms around its body. It had lain like that a while, and she watched, clutching her arms until her knuckles were bloodless.

'_C'mon, Stupei, hurry up!'_ Yukari thought, not even blinking as she stared. _'Please.'_

Another tide purled through the car; ripples of arms moving from the front of the vehicle and stuffing themselves into the window Junpei had slipped through.

'_Quit—quit making me wait like this!'_ A moment passed, or maybe an hour—without time, the moon didn't shift overhead, a slow, emerald cloud spilling in front of it, and Yukari sunk down, the Dark

Hour chill of the refrigerator biting the undersides of her thighs. Boneless jaws snapped below her; arms, black and viscous, tossed through the air, clawing uselessly at slick metal. The minutes slid by, toneless and empty, and dimly, Yukari's hands began to shake.

'_Don't be dead, Stupei, don't be dead,'_ she thought, and the lingering stillness put a cold weight on her heart and her hope. _'If you're dead, I—I don't—I kind-of—can't believe this is real. Are we—are we going to—'_ She crushed the thought. _'We're not—we're not gonna die here.' _Her eyes burned._ 'I'll see them, and everyone else, soon.'_

She saw them flash briefly in her memory as Mitsuru's driver opened the door to her limousine, Mitsuru and Aigis already waiting inside while she and Fuuka slipped in and Junpei ducked in after them. It had to be the first S.E.E.S. assembly of any kind since the summer before, but it hadn't been a time for reunions or memories. Before the briefing proper, they broke for a round of 'hitting the vending machines for a minute,' as Junpei called it. He stepped out of the limousine and stopped to lean against the rear bumper, sliding his thumb through the lock on his smartphone as it vibrated—just fast enough to catch the missed call. And then, unlike any other of his employer's guests that day, Mitsuru's driver, an older man, dark and lean with a tiger's smile, spoke to him.

"Hey, son."

Junpei glanced up, distracted. "Oh—uh, hey."

"You the only man back there?" the driver continued as he cracked his knuckles. He wore no jacket and his vest hung open over his pressed shirt, two tousled lines of pearled buttons and mandarin loops along the dark, gray silk. "Must be rough."

A cloud passed in the perfect sky, shadowing them both as Junpei got up off the car, fished out his wallet, and pulled a couple hundred yen from behind a few five-dollar bills and his California State ID, his smile way too wide for the institutional picture.

"Used to it," Junpei answered, swapping his attention between his phone and the vending machine. Truth be told, the rainbow of drinks almost overwhelmed him—how to choose from the rows of Mad Bull, Cielo Mist, and all his other, old nation-wide favorites? A couple of interesting regional selections, Dr. Salt Neo and TaP Soda, gleamed alongside them above the blue line designating the machine's 'cold drink' selection. He could get Cielo Mist occasionally by the overpriced, imported case in the States, but not from machines, like old times. He missed machines like this, well-lit and stocked with _everything_; American vending machines hadn't quite reached Japan's power level.

'_Oh man, what do I get? I haven't had Mad Bull since I flew over—and what even is TaP Soda? Looks—orange-y.'_

"Who were you calling?" the driver interrupted his dilemma.

Junpei frowned and committed. He punched a button, a frosty can of Mad Bull falling down in the bay.

"Just the girlfriend," he said, putting his phone away.

"Ah, no wonder you're used to it," the driver said.

"What?"

"Nothing, son, nothing. You have a good evening—don't let all that estrogen get to your head."

"Uh, okay, thanks," Junpei said, taking the can out of the bay, the frost condescending at his touch. The driver vanished into the limo as Junpei headed to the passenger-door and went back inside, slinging himself into an empty part of the seating. A window, sealed and darkened, blocked his view of the driver's seat, and only a dashboard mosaicked in light glowed through the dimness, obscured by a thick shadow. Almost soundlessly the car started, the wheels turning smoothly beneath them. The train station fell away, replaced by passing alleyways and country shops, and Mitsuru touched the largest monitor, chasing off the Kirijo screensaver, and, with a wave of her hand over the touchscreen, orchestrated her briefing.

"Recovering Labrys, and containing any damage it has done, is our first priority," Mitsuru had said to them, all business. The central monitor in the limo's computer bank depicted a slim anti-shadow weapon, armored and helmeted with a massive axe. Numbers read out from every part of its body, prim, scientific inscriptions of the unit's generation, its performance against its prototypes, its power capacity, and damage ability. There was a distressing lack of notation on any of its potential weaknesses.

"I've outfitted you three with any necessities you may need to complete the mission—in the event the first wave should fail to recapture the missing unit," Mitsuru said, and said necessities had been carefully packed in the trunk, a scabbarded katana, a polished bow, and a sealed quiver of arrows, while their last provision, the aluminum briefcase, sat placidly beside the computer-bank in the cabin.

"I do not intend to fail Labrys," Aigis interrupted.

"Then, in the event Aigis needs further back-up," Mitsuru added lightly. "Any questions?"

"Why waves?" Yukari had asked. "Why aren't we going with you?"

"Because," Mitsuru had said, and Yukari barely remembered the well-ordered explanation. All she had now was the 'because', but despite the 'because,' their weapons were still melting down in the stomach of a shadow-possessed limousine, beyond all help and beyond all good to anyone. The aluminum briefcase might have made it; it had as good a chance as Fuuka did.

'_Hurry up, guys, hurry.'_ Yukari lifted her face, the car sitting still and silent along the only road running through the yard. The arms shivered, like reeds, and suddenly frenzied, breaking the car's remaining windows as they forced their way into the cabin. The car bowed sharply, the metal groaning, and the arms stilled, a long, sharp, and squealing hiss rising in the night.

Yukari's hand went to her mouth, her eyes wide with a sudden surge of panic: _'Oh, no, no, no—'_ and her nose wrinkled, _'What's that smell?'_ Something in the yard burned fresh and slowly.

The front of the limo twisted up, belched black smoke rimmed in red just once, and exploded. Yukari yelped and ducked, a meteor-shower of hot metal and sizzling shadow bits flying through the air, as the car-side, swimming with arms, gashed open. Among the smoke and twisting shadows, a familiar, turquoise head of hair appeared, slumped against the broken side of the distorted hole.

"Oh! Oh! You guys!" Yukari bolted up and scrambled down onto a neighboring stove. The shadows rustled at her movement, flopping toward her as she hopped to the ground and darted away from the horde at the foot of her fridge.

"Fuuka!" she shouted. Fuuka stepped out of the hole and slid gently to her knees, her fingers brushing the ground for stability, the wreck of the car bleeding out in rivers of black ooze.

"Yukari-chan," Fuuka said wearily as Yukari slid to a stop and almost fell down beside her. Fuuka clutched the aluminum case, its locks hanging open and only her arms holding the contents safe.

"Fuuka, are you okay?! Where's Junpei?!"

"Here," Junpei said. He stumbled out of the limo, his clothes edged with char and spotted with black and red blood. A chain of bruises wrapped his neck, and his evoker dangled from his right hand. Yukari blanched, her face turning to slate.

"_What happened to you_—"

"Man, Agi—Agidyne happened to me; never used it that close before—" Junpei said. "S'fine—_It's_ fine." He staggered, then straightened, and breathed deep, the cold, coppery smell of the Dark Hour filling his lungs. "Oh man, never thought I'd be glad to breathe _this _air." He wiped the sweat from his face, his old vigor lighting in his eyes and his voice. "Fuuka, what's—the hell's going on?"

"I—I don't know yet," Fuuka said. She released her hold on the case, the lid flopping open. "But Yukari-chan, your evoker—" Yukari nodded and plucked her evoker from the foam. Fuuka took hers out last and held in both hands in her lap.

"I think something," Fuuka started slowly, her brow furrowing in concentration, "something's happening _inside_ there—inside the TV—"

"You're telling me!" Junpei said, shaking the black gunk off his evoker. "Something's happening_ outside_ too!"

"_What_?" Fuuka's eyes opened and came into focus. The car lay on its side, flailing and shrieking, a burnt and mutilated animal. Shadows came creeping closer and closer at its deathly sounds. A few slid together, forming larger pools of darkness, as their shapes began to tremble, growing more _defined_ features. Muscle rose from the shapelessness, wings poked haphazardly into form, and teeth cut up from soft mouths as empty eyes rounded, burning bright and vicious.

Junpei didn't wait for anyone's orders and put the clean gun to his temple.

"Trismegistus!"

His shot cracked, throwing out a spark of spiritual debris from the side of his skull, and Trismegistus emerged in a fountain of light and flame. The shadows bobbled in the light-show, their red eyes drooping out of alignment, and Trismegistus's Vorpal Blade ripped into the horde.

"We've got some breathing room now!" Junpei said, his chest heaving even as he grinned proudly at the new clearing; the shadows reduced to dark stains among the torn rubble. He dropped his evoker to his side, a strange aura, flickering and fire-bright, creeping at the edges of him, slowly repairing the damage done to his body from calling the Vorpal Blade.

"Be careful with that!" Yukari scolded. "You're really hurt already—"

"I'm fine, Yuka-tan!" Junpei's legs wobbled. "I just—need a minute."

"You're really dumb, you know that?"

Yukari set the mouth of her evoker to the center of her forehead and the cool metal kissed her skin. She almost jumped at the icy sensation and readjusted her hold, finding the familiar fit of her fingers to the grip as she breathed in deeply, and fired. Her heart welled, an intensity of feeling bearing down on the walls of her, pressuring tears from her eyes, until the shot rang out and with it, the sharp, crystal crackling of her soul, as Isis spread from within her with eyes ablaze and great, golden wings aloft, the red disk of the sun bore in the crown of her horns.

Yukari released the breath she had been holding, for ten seconds, for ten months, for who knew however long in the relativity of her heart's time. The spell followed the shot naturally, and Diarahan fell softly from the ring of golden light, healing what Trismegistus could not. The slow-falling stars lifted Junpei's burns and paled his bruises, a cut through his eyebrow fading.

"Hey, thanks!" Junpei said, closing and opening his left hand as the soreness slipped away. "You still got it!"

"_Of course_ I do," Yukari said, shucking her annoyance and shifting to seriousness. "Fuuka, what's going on? Why is the Dark Hour here?"

"I don't know, but power is pouring from the TV world," Fuuka said, putting a hand to her forehead as if she had a migraine. "I can feel it even without Juno. I'm almost certain Aigis and the others found Labrys—and something terrible happened."

"Think you can find out?" Junpei asked. Fuuka nodded.

"I can, but I think they will need my help in there. I won't be able to support you two out here—"

"Don't worry about it. We got your back."

"Absolutely," Yukari said.

For a moment, the three huddled together, like old times, as the plan fell reactively into place, shadows gathering from the darkness at the edges of Trismegistus's damage circle.

"We'll set up here in the clearing," Yukari said.

"Yeah! My clearing!" Junpei said with a chest thump.

"Yes, _your_ clearing," Yukari acknowledged. "Junpei will go on the offensive—"

"And Yuka-tan'll back me up," he finished. "When she's not bringing the windy hurt. Nothing'll happen to you while you're 'away'."

"Thank you, Junpei-kun, Yukari-chan," Fuuka said earnestly. "If we can finish this, I think the Dark Hour will dispel."

"Great, it's creepy seeing it outside of midnight," Junpei said. Around them, the Dark Hour lay poised on the ridge of a dark dawn, the green sky hung lighter than in their memories, but the fat moon persisted.

"It's _always_ creepy," Yukari said simply. "Well, are we gonna do this or what?"

"We will," Fuuka said. "Be careful, you two."

"Don't sweat it," Junpei said pleasantly. "We'll see the whole team soon."

"We will, and thank you for saving me, Junpei-kun," she said.

"No problem."

Fuuka smiled, serenely, and closed her eyes as she fitted her evoker into the gentle bend of bone just beside her eye-socket. At the sounding of the gun, Juno flew free, enveloping her charge in a sphere of light, the cloudy surface shifting like ice, as her wings flung wide, blocking out the yellow moonlight. Then, quietly and abruptly, the sphere darkened, the veins of the membrane thickening, and Fuuka left her body.

Junpei looked away.

"Let's do this, Yuka-tan!"

Yukari hesitated, unused to this sort of plan of action.

"We really _only_ have our personas now," she reminded him. "So, every move we make is gonna cost us something."

The shadows grew interested in their conversation and crowded along the edges of Trismegistus's damage circle. They spread hesitantly over the blackened smears of their fellows.

"We got company," Junpei pointed out.

"Okay, don't over-do it, we gotta pace ourselves—"

Junpei split a dozen blobby bodies, and a handful of refrigerators, deep into the junkyard with the fatal stroke of his Brave Blade. The surviving shadows thrashed, grasping at their severed pieces as a roaring fire broke out among them, making ash of the remains.

"Did you even hear me? You wanna burn out before we get started?" Yukari asked. She put her gun to her forehead again and the wind picked up, a blasting Magarudyne sweeping out a curious trio.

"Hey, with you around, health is gonna be cheap!" Junpei called back, his eyes flickering with the Spring of Life.

Yukari sighed. "Never change, Stupei—"

The ground rocked, the tremor shaking coffee-makers and shattered TVs down into the grassy pathways mazing through the junkyard. It came again, as the Spring of Life darkened and faded, and Junpei smirked.

"Back for more, shithead?" he called.

The limo had thrown itself over, pancaking the roof and smashing out what remained of the windows, but it walked now. The smoldering tentacles gathered themselves into crude legs with steps like thunder. The car dragged its burning body into the clearing and suddenly fell hard on the ground, shuddering the piles of e-waste. It lay there, its body heaving and dropping shriveled curls of burned tentacles.

"It's still alive?" Yukari asked.

"Not for long," Junpei said. "I got more for ya!" He pulled his trigger, the air contorting into a gigantic, psychic fist and ramming the heart of the car. It roared, throwing up its head and barring its ragged, metal teeth. It slumped, shivered, and suddenly bucked forward, its mouth becoming a yawning gulch as the metal teeth fell out, twisted and lifeless on the ground. The whole of the shadow shuddered as it spewed out a stomach of molten metal, the distorted and digested remains of the Kirijo limousine. A half-melted hood ornament even gleamed among the metal sick.

A black ghost remained, massive and eyeless, all the depths of starless space in the still cloud of its body. Yukari backed up a step.

"Junpei, I've got a bad feeling—"

"Hey, they're running," Junpei interrupted her. "The other shadows—they're running." The smaller shadows that had been hovering like scavengers carried themselves off with every arm they had, throwing themselves in the only directions that took them away. But a mysterious magnetism caught them and dragged them back, their claws digging in the ground as they slid past, toward the tower of blackness.

And then, no matter how far they'd fled into the night, the shadows faded, and the thing that had possessed the car stiffened and drew its night-colored folds into a smooth, towering monolith. A ripple passed through the face of the steele, and an island of whiteness lifted from the liquid darkness, an eyeless mask, smooth, and white, and perfect as bone china, with no mouth and a crown of spikes. The mask lifted off the monolith, suspended in air by a long, black arm that sprouted a tailored black suit, white gloves, and a snow-colored triangle of silk handkerchief folded in the suit's breast pocket. The body stretched and stroked its chin, regarding them with a mouthless expression.

"Hello again, son," it said. Junpei's eyes widened, the old voice of the limousine-driver, good-humored but condescending, filled his ears, disembodied from its prior form in his memory. It growled now like the voice of a lion, deep and fanged.

"What? No way! It's you—"

The shadow put up its hands.

"I don't let you kids get far from me," it said. "Matter of fact, I've driven you here." It chuckled at the private joke.

"Who—who are you?" Yukari asked.

"I am a facet of the writhing darkness, the crawling chaos," it said proudly, a white hand over its dark breast. "Don't you know me?"

"I know we're gonna kick your ass," Junpei shot back.

And the 'crawling chaos' laughed.

"You kids can't stop me. Your 'innumerable selves,' your 'masks,' of 'divine love and demonic cruelty,' your 'personas,'" the shadow said with a mocking hilt, "they're _nothing_ without him backing you up."

"Him?" Yukari asked, and the demon's laugh deepened, rumbling like a storm. A thing like a name rose up unbidden and alien in her mind on a dark and creeping whisper and with it, she heard in her heart the hiss of black sands over the steps of green pyramids under an impossible sky, its violet-tinged blackness full of wheeling galaxies and burning worlds.

'_Know me,' _it said. _'Nyarlathotep.'_

Yukari startled back a step, both hands on the grip of her evoker, and the crawling chaos chuckled again deep in its chest.

"Does Philemon even speak to you kids anymore?" it asked. "Does that name even mean anything to you?"

"You just gonna stand here talking or are you gonna do something?" Junpei demanded.

"Don't worry, son, I've certainly come to kill you," it said. "But it breaks my heart to tell you that I can't do it personally. I've matters to attend to. A bet is a bet, but I'll be leaving you both in good hands." The shadow touched the chin of its mask, a line driving down the center of its face. The mask cracked neatly apart, the black face beneath gasping and splitting into two. The two heads pulled desperately apart, twitching and conjoined, as the body continued to unzip down the middle, the two forms finally tearing free at their ankles. The dark shapes shivered and congealed, each wearing a perfect half of the demon's mask as its face rose from formlessness around a glittering, golden eye.

"Very good hands," the voice promised a final time, then it wavered and diffused as it laughed, the leonine voice breaking into a pair of feminine and masculine voices laughing together in unison.

"Because we are Shadows," the masculine voice housed in the right shadow announced.

"The true selves," cooed his partner on the left.

These silhouettes were all too familiar with the right shadow's lanky height and wiry frame all bent up into a crooked stance as half of Junpei's own face grinned back at him, a rabid glint in the golden eye and the exposed teeth. He felt the melded baseball cap was a little unnecessary but accurate. The second shadow, of course, was shorter and curvier. She wore her half of the demon's mask slanted over her face, like an oversized and ridiculous hairpin, as she curled one lock of her hair around her finger, a deceptively playful smile on the bud of her lips. Junpei had never known Yukari to ever look so damn excited about anything, and shook his head.

'_Clearly, I'm not looking at Yuka-tan,'_ he told himself.

"What—what are these?" Yukari, the real one, asked. "Are they really shadows?"

"I don't know, but I bet they burn like shadows," Junpei said, putting his evoker to his head. A rude, barking laughter interrupted at him as his shadowy twin abruptly lost it, his own voice twisting with something deeper and darker as the shadow threw its head back and laughed.

"Look—look at you!" it said, catching its breath long enough to speak. "You—you really think you're _something_, don't you?" It broke down cawing like a hyena again.

"You wanna make something of it?!"

The shadow quieted. "I don't have to, asshole—you know what I'm talking about. I'm you, and I'd give anything to be the big, damn hero, to be somebody who matters, any-fucking-thing—"

"What the hell? That's not—"

"Do I really gotta tell you stuff you already know, dumbass? The world's pretty simple, you got your heroes and your villains, and if I'm not a hero, I'm just a villain, just another worthless piece of shit making people suffer, just like—"

"Shut—" Junpei's voice was heavy, choked. "Shut the hell up!"

"If I'm not a hero, I'm just like my old man." The shadow's face grew serious before it let out a jagged laugh. "A worthless piece of—" Junpei lost sight of himself, his body flying forward in the black of his senses, until he felt the shadow's jaw crack as pure and painful fire concentrated through the bones of his hand, and black blood dotted his knuckles. He pulled his fist back and shook out the pain as the shadow flung back, blood and spit smearing its lips, as it coughed.

"You hit me," it growled. "_You fucking hit me!"_ It coughed again, black blood splattering its mouth. It wiped the slick away and laughed, again, a wet, gurgling sound. "I'm—I'm really no fucking different, no fucking different. And now, I'll never forget—I'll never forget him, that night, he was madder than hell that night, and I was _feeling_ it, feeling it until I couldn't feel anything else—and for the first time, I hit that bastard back." The shadow watched Junpei with its yellow eye. "And I broke his fucking nose open, he bled like a pig, blood all over his face—on my knuckles, my hands—and I ran away, scared fucking shitless, but I knew, as I was running, I knew right then, that he and I, we—we were the—"

Junpei's arm jerked back for another punch.

"Junpei—stop!" Yukari threw everything she had into stopping him, and he slammed full-force against her, an unsettling, bone-shaking strength and, even worse, a quiet, smoldering anger. "You have to stop!" she insisted again as her mind whorled. _'I never knew your dad hit you,_' she thought, her thoughts spinning faster than she could follow. _'I never knew—you never said anything—and I had no—'_

"Yukari, let me go—I'm gonna—"

His voice was low, empty even, a voice she had never known before this.

"No! Stop it! Don't listen—"

"I don't know why you're acting like you care about any of this," her distorted voice butted in, sounding perfectly bored with a dash of something bitchy. "But you act an awful lot, you know."

Yukari whipped her head around, her glare narrow and poisonous and her body a wall between the shadows and Junpei.

"Don't even start that with me, I'm—"

"I'm—I'm _what_?" her shadow inquired back, its hands folded behind its back and its hips cocked, like it had only paused a moment in a macabre dance. "I don't really know what I am. I act a lot—and I'm only _acting_ like anything matters!"

"_I'm_ on to you," Yukari finished, just above a threat. "I know what you're trying to do, and it's not gonna—"

"You're _on_ to me? Gosh, Yukari Takeba is so smart! She knows _everything_—"

Junpei gasped, choking on a cough, and suddenly slumped against Yukari. She startled, catching him messily under his arms, and stumbled, her strength not quite enough. They sunk down together and he leaned heavily on her shoulder, his breath coming fast and ragged.

"Junpei—"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said breathlessly. He gulped air again and calmed, still leaning against her.

"What happened—"

"I don't—" He stopped, his eyes shutting tight, sweat beading his brow, and shouted out in wordless pain. He bit down, clenching his teeth on his noise and clutching his head, and his other hand twisted in the fabric of Yukari's jacket.

"And I'm—not—fine," he said brokenly. "_Shit_—my head—"

Isis told her of pain, a dizzying sensation of an old wound tearing and beneath the opened scar, a black hole yawning within him, but at the same time, nothing, no wound physical. But despite that, he shook profusely in her arms and emotions churned within him, senses of fear, panic, and distress.

Yukari pulled her gun and evoked 'Patra,' but the ribbons of light circled them uselessly, laying down a soothing silence. It lasted only a moment and Junpei pitched forward again, gritting his teeth. And then it passed, the torture of his breathing eased, and Junpei sat back up. Yukari sidled out from under his arm, stood up, and holstered her evoker.

"Did that help—"

A cold hand struck her hard across the face, the force knocking her sideways. Her balance danced precariously, and she reeled, clutching her face, and caught herself before she fell.

"Don't ignore me!" her shadow commanded. It put its hand down, its shoulders trembling. "Pay attention to me when I'm talking!" Yukari's hand lingered on her face, her raw cheek throbbing and a red bruise rising. She made a fist at her side, glaring at the shadow.

"Stop acting like a little kid!" Yukari snapped. "This is _serious_—"

The shadow stamped its foot. "What do _you_ know about 'serious'?"

"I know—"

"I _think_ I know _everything!_ I'm _so_ smart! But I don't really know _anything_! I'm only acting like any of this matters! This isn't serious—"

Yukari grimaced.

"It _is_ serious—"

"C'mon! It's Stupei," the shadow jeered. "Remember? 'We're friends—but we're not _best_ friends,' remember? I said that, because we're _barely_ friends. I mean, think of how many times I've hit him—"

Scenes of her own making rose in her mind, Junpei and blood spotting a kitchen floor, Junpei and the hulking shadow of a man she had never met, and herself. Emotional semantics warred it out in her head, teasing and jokes, the straying, flickering line they had always walked together, the weight of a friendly cuff and the fall of a fatherly punch, context and intent. _'I didn't know,'_ Yukari thought, closing her eyes on the scene and bringing a silence to her mind, _'and I can't think about this now.' _She shook her head.

"But I guess it doesn't matter what Stupei feels," the shadow picked up again. It frowned viciously in royal offense. "Stupei just _took off_—without saying _anything_ to _me!_ If I don't matter enough to him for a _good bye_, why should he matter to me?"

"That's not important—"

"Of course _it's_ important. That's what S.E.E.S. is _for_," the shadow said heavily, and then her voice lightened, suddenly girlish and gossiping, and she leaned in close, a sickened angle in her half-smile. "I mean, I don't hang out with any of these people because I _like them_, or anything. S.E.E.S. is just supposed to protect me. And of anybody in S.E.E.S., Stupei means the _least_ to me—"

"Stop—stop saying that—"

"What? Do you think he heard me?" It put its finger to its lip in false apology. "Oops—"

Yukari heard him shuffle and stand. Without glancing back, she felt him sway, his steps uneven as that mysterious pain wracked through him.

"Junpei." She turned around suddenly, her hand reaching for him unconsciously. "Junpei, wait, I'm—"

Truthfully, finding out Yukari hated his guts wasn't really as surprising as Junpei would have liked, but the realization still came with a stinging sensation.

"Yeah, I can't—listen to this," Junpei interrupted, pulling away from her. His head would not stop pounding, splitting even. It beat at him like an angry tide, weathering away his energy and flooding his body with weakness. Botches of simply _nothing_ clouded his sight, and Yukari's face just vanished any time she slipped into his peripheral vision. Meanwhile, the pain in his head shifted constantly, flowing from side to side, and the colorless blind spots intensified on whichever side of his brain the ache lurked. He tried to rub his eyes, and the pain tweaked sharper as his breath began to quicken.

"Good going at protecting him from me, Yuka-tan," Junpei's shadow started.

"You—_you're_ worse than he is. You be quiet—"

"Yuka—Yukari, just—stop," Junpei said. He grimaced, and another wave of pain and sickness stifled his thoughts. _'My head—what's—what's going on_?'

"Junpei—"

"I said just _stop_," he told her. _'I gotta—think—about this.'_ Pain bolted through his brain, distorting the mess of all the shit currently airing out in public already on his mind. He took off his cap and mopped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

And then, he walked away. Yukari's hand floated in the air. She dropped it back to her side as he left, and her shadow smirked, hands back on its hips.

"Finally!" it said. "Now, it's just us."

[- - -]

Junpei's shadow followed him; its head held high, and its hands in its pockets. It sauntered after him, pausing every so often to chuckle and laugh at nothing. He stopped, not too far off, and glanced back; Yukari stood alone with her shadow, her head bowed, and saying nothing.

His shadow covered its mouth, stifling its snickering at first, as its body shivered. It gave up, laughter sputtering through its hands. Junpei took a deep breath, that damned laughing crawling after him.

"What the fuck are you laughing at, jackass?!" he shot back. The shadow snorted and snickered a final time, its breath evening out.

"I'm—I'm laughing at you," it said around its sniggers. "You—you stomping off from your 'friend'—you're a match, you and her, you know that? She only came for protection, and you? You flew out here the minute you thought you'd get the chance to play Hero—"

Junpei spun around, fed up, and shouted, "God! Haven't you got anything else to say?"

The shadow stopped laughing, and Junpei found the fierceness to grin back victoriously.

"I knew it—there isn't much—"

"I didn't love Chidori," the shadow said very seriously, and Junpei's heart stopped cold. "Oh, sure, there were _feelings_, my heart felt stuff, and we were so friggin' alike, wanting to be special, wanting to be above it all—but what we did wasn't love. If she could love me, I wouldn't have wanted her—but if I could _make_ her love me anyway, then maybe, maybe—" A chuckle polluted the story. "But then, she _died_. She died to save me, to love me, and for as long as I'm alive, I live on her time, the time I stole from her—"

"Fuck off," Junpei said, and then for emphasis: "Fuck off, you piece of shit."

For the first time, his shadow's face blanked, its mouth a peaceful, neutral line. Then, it broke into another smile sharp and rabid, its shoulders shaking with a new round of snickering and crackles of laughter. The pain built in Junpei's head again, an earthquake in his flesh as his thoughts shuddered, and a low voice floated up through his own voice and the warped voice of his shadow. It spoke in toneless mantra as if it whispered along with the rhythm of his heartbreak.

'_I…I,'_ the voice in his heart murmured. The egotistic beat ceased. _'I…am not thou, and thou…art not I.' _And every muscle in Junpei's body tightened, becoming burning coils, and the pain in his head split into a pair of phantom hands meeting at the seam of his skull and shoving their fingers up to grasp the bone and _pull_.

Junpei doubled over, and his shadow laughed long and wildly, as his skull seemed to split open and agony branched down his neck and shoulders. And the voice kept repeating, unflinching, _'I am not thou, and thou art not I,'_ over and over until Junpei realized, gasping, his lungs under fire, that he recognized it. He had heard that voice, speaking similar words, once before, in the 24-hour convenience store, as his first Dark Hour fell and the coffins rose, wreathed in green fog. That voice spoke through him, as it did now, and he hadn't liked it then, it was freaky and schizophrenic enough, but something in its tone now chilled him.

The pain intensified, like a rift tearing down his spine, and a horned shadow loomed over him, its red eyes gleaming through a blackened helm. A red sphere glimmered in its beak, and the skull beneath the helm mutated and split the metal. A mouth, long and toothy, ripped from the helm, clutching the tiny orb, and it bit down, shattering the ball of fire. The shards of flame streaked the earth as the shadow reared its head and roared.

'_And I,'_ the shadow said, wrenching free of Junpei's heart, black fire sparking as its clawed hands sunk to the ground and metal wings glowed darkly in the yellow moonlight. _'I, Alone, will slaughter the Worthless!'_

[- - -]

"There he goes, abandoning me again," Yukari's shadow said, crossing her arms. "They just don't get it—no one gets it—"

Yukari's clenched fist quaked and then slacked against her side. She searched her heart for anger, but her familiar beast lay quiet and still. Junpei had slipped from her sight for the moment, and she faced her shadow alone—and 'she,' or whatever it was, could not have looked more pleased. Yukari blinked and glanced away from 'herself,' the dark and distorted mirror of her own face and her own body hard to look too closely for too long. It smiled, coy and constant, the expression never weakening.

"Why?" Yukari asked, her voice rising as the shadow's tricking smile irked her. "Why did you tell him that—"

"Because it's true," her shadow said matter-of-factually. "I'm with S.E.E.S. because they're going to protect me."

"That's not—"

"Yes, it _is_ true," the shadow said, crossing its arms. It leaned, its clothes almost pixelated as it wore what she wore, jeans and a summery camisole, and the lacing at the neck and hem of the shirt flickered like broken textures.

But it didn't wear her jacket, and that gray hood fell down over her shoulders, the too long sleeves draping her hands. The garment was older than anything she might have owned, the elastic of its cuffs wearing, but she found her fists again in the cloak of the battered cuffs.

"Why?" Yukari demanded, taking a tight hold of her rage renewed. "Why would I—"

"If S.E.E.S. doesn't protect me, I'll forget again," the shadow continued. Its mouth turned down seriously, and the smoky agitation flitting across its profile stabilized. "I don't like fighting; evokers are loud, and they give me a headache, but I have to fight!" the shadow said resolutely. "If Mitsuru won't let me fight, the truth will just fall out of my head, like last time, and I'll forget everything!" The shadow's hands fell at its sides, and for a moment, Yukari thought she saw the golden eye quiver and water. "I'll forget what Minato-kun died for, I'll forget what my father died for, and if I forget, everybody—Mitsuru, Junpei—everybody will forget me."

"So what?" Yukari asked, almost shuddering in her anger. "Everybody—"

"But I don't want them to!" the shadow said plaintively. "I don't want them to! Because _everybody_ forgets me and leaves me behind."

Yukari swallowed. Of all the things shadows said, she had expected something—something different, but the shadow talked on anyway. Its lower lip beginning to tremble, its tears fattening, and Yukari felt an acute embarrassment for it, crying about these things, where someone could see—

"Mitsuru left me," the shadow said, shaking. "She left me behind—just like Minato-kun left me—just like my father did. Everybody _always_ leaves me behind for 'the greater good,' whatever that is, because they 'want' things for me. Nobody ever really cares about my 'good,' what I really want."

"That's selfish—"

"I _know_ it's selfish; it's _so_ selfish; but my pain—_my good_ means something, and nobody will think of me, and my 'good,' if I don't. Why does the world matter if I'm not happy in it?"

Yukari looked at her shoes, muddy from the yard and streaked from impromptu refrigerator-climbing, and the moon, the sleeping eye of Nyx, really, glowed up at her from a puddle of blood. _'Why does the world matter,'_ her thoughts echoed back, falling as a flat and empty question.

"Well! Why does it!" the shadow shouted. "If I'm not happy—"

Yukari's anger diminished and she avoided the shadow's eyes, looking anywhere but at the shadow girl and the moon in the puddle.

"Because—" Yukari started sheepishly, and the moon jerked suddenly in the pool. The shadow's smile ripped away, flooded with the rage Yukari herself couldn't call, and it grabbed the folds of her hoodie and yanked her close. Its eye burned, hot with tears and shining with anger.

"No more 'because's!" the shadow said low, and deadly, and _finished_ with excuses. "_No more_!"

Yukari's brain hung in a daze.

"I'm—I'm sorry—" she said weakly.

The shadow's fingers dug into the hoodie, cutting into her shoulders, and it shook her, the green yard flying and the true vault of the poisoned sky and the swollen moon rocking in and out of Yukari's vision.

"No, no, you're not! Because they never are!" it insisted, and Yukari's hands flew up instinctively and grasped the shadow's wrists, shutting down the shaking. Her breath rushed in and out of her, her heart storming in her chest, as she held on, the shadow struggling and finally shoving her away. Yukari caught her breath and pulled her hoodie out of the uncomfortable kinks gathering her neck and shoulders. Something like a bruise smoldered along her collarbone in short, narrow stripes of dull pain.

"You—you're right," Yukari said finally. "I'm not sorry." She said it loosely, turning it over in her mind. "Even when I'm saving the world, I'm still selfish. I don't want to if it means—if it means—" she stopped, unable to finish. "I hate getting left behind. I don't know if I hate anything else so much, and I think I've kind-of always known that's who I'm like—no, that's who I am."

Her expression wavered, uncertain yet thinking, until she smiled sadly at herself. Yukari closed her eyes, shutting out the junkyard for a dark flash. It filled with light again, and she turned to look at her shadow, training her eyes on the shifting, tearing edges of its body.

"It's—not right, it's not fair, and I don't really like it, but it's who I am. Sometimes," she said. "I'm pretty petty, I guess—I wanted so much to fight, and I never even told Mitsuru why. I never told her, or anyone, anything. I just—threw fits when I didn't get what I wanted, when people left," she admitted. "I am selfish, and I'm scared, but—but I'm other things too."

"'Other things'?" the shadow echoed. "What 'other things' are there?"

"I'm loyal," Yukari said gently, knowing the tangible memory of her father's letter and a custom-bow Minato had given her one night in September 2009, a weapon that tamed her weakness. She shut her eyes again, feeling that well-worn paper and the smooth wood on the palms of her hands as if she held them now. "And I never forget—even when people forget or leave me behind." She opened her eyes again, the memories fleeing. "And even though I'm mad, at Mitsuru, at Junpei, and even though I'm scared, and even though I'm selfish, I'll fight and I'll stand by them if they need me! I'll fight because I'm more than—what I think I am."

The shadow's lip twitched, her yellow eye wide and unblinking.

"You're—you're not listening—"

"No, _I am_," Yukari insisted, stepping forward. "You're—you're _actually_ me." Her voice spilled out, a river of relief in the admission. "I'm listening—and I'm not gonna back down from you—us—anymore!"

"_No_!" the shadow shrieked, its hands clutching the sides of its head. "You're—Not—Listening—" The shadow's eye shivered and suddenly stilled, its mouth falling open. its body slackened and the face of the monolith trembled, a tentacle flying from the steele and fastening around the shadow's neck. Its hands clawed blindly, pulling uselessly at the binding, as the arm lifted it up off the ground and squeezed until the shadow's feet hung loose as its head lolled back and its hands fell, twitching.

"Enough," said the leonine voice of the crawling chaos from all around. "If I can't have your Shadow, your death is fair—I'll release you both into the ether." And a dark fire caught the limp shadow's body, immolating the familiar form and scattering a night-colored dust.

* * *

I want to give my personal thanks to those of you that decided to follow and favorite this fic and to everyone that's giving it a look. There are about 115 or so of you, and that means a lot to me. Also, thank you to reviewer, Jin. I'm flattered that was the only error you found, and I fixed it right away.

The final chapter is still on schedule for 11/5/12. So, until next week! o/


	3. On the Morning of May 5, 2012

_(This fanfiction can also be read at Archive of Our Own under the same title and penname.)_

* * *

**Benched**

**Chapter 3: On the Morning of May 5, 2012**

* * *

The red eyes of the thing that had been Trismegistus found him, and the twisted helm sunk down to meet Junpei's eye level.

"I am a Shadow," he declared, speaking in Junpei's own voice, weighty with darkness. "The true Self."

"I did it!" Junpei's _other_ shadow said, laughing. "I _fucking_ did it!" It laughed again, its voice growing deep and rich. "You're dead, son!" And with that, it seemed to be finally gone. The yard suddenly stood empty, empty but for him and his true shadow.

Junpei sagged over, falling listlessly on the ground, and he lifted his head as his vision swam—the shadow's helm a dark scar on the moon. He felt—_'Ripped out,'_ he thought, his eyelids fluttering. _'He ripped me out.'_ He opened them again, the black maw looming closer.

"I am a hero! A hero for all time!" Trismegistus pronounced, snapping his jaws as a cloak of flames blazed along his back and shoulders. "And I will slaughter the worthless and the weak!" A line of bony spikes lanced up along his spine.

Junpei dropped his head back on the ground. _'Fuck._' The night sped by him, the memories as vivid as a montage, and he sighed. _'I guess…this…is how I die. Huh.'_ He could barely move, and if he had the strength to fire his evoker, nothing would answer.

Trismegistus buried his hand in his own chest, grasping within the cavity for the hilt of a fiery sword. He dragged it out, flame licking the blade, and stretched the katana fully, longer than Junpei was tall.

"Let me hear you run from death," Trismegistus boomed, "and cry for my mercy, o pusillanimous one!"

'_I didn't even know I knew that word,'_ Junpei thought fitfully. "I'm—I'm not gonna beg—"

"Then, I shall kill you, swiftly and without ceremony." Trismegistus drew his sword back in a long swing, cutting the air with a hiss of momentum before he swung back, and Junpei held his eyes open. He would not die hiding in dark—

But the blade connected—halted by a small and shining sacrificial dagger held aloft by a red and spindly arm.

'_I am not corrupted,'_ Medea said, sliding from the limp young man. _'I—am myself. This is not how it should be.' _The embers of the broken red orb trembled on the ground and leapt into the empty lamp she carried to burn in a rippling plume of flame.

'_It seems I was discarded. How fortuitous.'_

She held the great blade still.

'_But I cannot fight. He and I, we are too kindred,'_ she turned to gaze down at Junpei, her wheat-colored hair wild and the red hollows of her skull on him. _'He will not cease. He will rage endlessly. You must stand, stand and do right by him.'_ Her lamp burned suddenly brighter, and the spring of life welled in Junpei's body, restoring an inkling of strength, power enough to stand.

"What—what does that mean—" He sat up.

'_You were cruel,'_ Medea said and evaporated, her dagger vanishing and leaving Trismegistus's blade hanging perilously in the air. _'Remember your cruelty.'_

"Have you risen to beg, boy?" Trismegistus thundered, and Junpei glared at him. _'I'm getting real tired of this RPG talk.'_

"No—"

"Then, you've risen to die—"

"_No_." He looked down. "I wanted to say something—I was a dick to you."

"Insincere formality will not sway me."

'Insincere formality'—this was like talking to a teacher, or that disciplinary committee rep who was crazy about cigarettes. The shadow regarded him, his patience a thread, Junpei's life a thread—a thread before a sword and a firestorm.

"You're right, I wasn't a dick to _you_," Junpei said, his voice softened with thoughtfulness. "I thought—well, I _wanted_ to be past _those days_. I really don't want to be like him, like my—my dad, I really want to be different. And I thought back then—like I thought now. But I'm not a hero."

"No, you are worthless," Trismegistus pronounced as he brought his sword to hover at Junpei's shoulder, the flames dancing the edge nearly licking his neck.

"Yeah, but so is everybody," Junpei said, his voice weighted. Sweat crawled down his neck and the line of his back from the nearness of the blazing sword. "There just—aren't heroes and villains out there. I remember seeing this movie once—with Minato—and I hated the ending, where you learned the villain was just—sad. And I felt—sad like that—and I hated knowing people do terrible things for their—reasons. And I did shitty things for my reasons." Junpei paused in the shadow of Trismegistus. "I've got some villain in me," he said finally. "Villain enough that I was a dick to my friends, and my best friend, just so I could feel like a hero, like I was different, and I was a dick to you over it, because, well, you're me."

The blade floating at his shoulder dissipated, curls of black smoke blowing away across the yard, and his mind seemed to come together suddenly quiet and complete. He felt two selves hover within him for just a moment of separation. Then, they met in the sea of the soul and fused, and Medea spoke to him a final time.

'_Remember your cruelty.'_

'_What else is there—'_ And he remembered her like the flash of the frozen day not yet risen, the lip of the stilled sky yellowing with its locked promise.

"Yuka-tan," Junpei said to no one. He searched the horizon of the junkyard for her. The black steele pulled high above the yard, stabbing heaven as an emerald storm circled and clutched the tip. The monolith poised like a rod above the broken skyline of abandoned televisions and refrigerators, and a bolt of blue lightning struck the tower.

The lightning tore in rivulets down the sides of the steele, breaking the tower into a spinning coil, an unnatural geometry, that bloomed into a flat, mushroomed head full of circles that betrayed circles. Flecks of light gathered and darted away in darkness, splitting into branching, brilliant filaments crackling with—

"Shit! No!"

[- - -]

She heard familiar laughter, laced with a predatory mirth, behind her and Yukari jumped, tugging away and out of the shadow of the steele. 'He' or it stood there now, and Junpei's shadow's half of the white mask had cracked. A second red eye glowed through the net of fractures. It grinned manically, twisting what it had left of Junpei's voice with its words.

"It's fucking over, bitch," it said. The mask split deeper, spilling a dusting of white glass through the sick smile.

"Get away from me!" Yukari ordered. The shadow pushed its hand into the skin of the steele and it gave like sludgy water, sucking its forearm up to the elbow as streams of shadow leapt along its bicep and shoulder, snatching into its face and dragging it away in tar-like streaks. She felt the air hiss and shift, loading with power.

"Where you're going," the shadow warned, its voice monstrous. "It doesn't matter how close I am."

[- - -]

Junpei knew the distance was shorter than it seemed, but only desperately so, and still, time dragged on too slowly. He cut into a sprint across the yard, tripping over the electric rubble as an jagged antenna bit through his jeans, shredding the fabric and brushing his calf with blood. He pushed his legs, his muscles flagging and stretching stiff against him, and Yukari stood in the shadow of that—crazy Tesla coil or something.

The straying filaments thickened in a vivid, pulsing cloud, a vein of energy too bright to bear, and Yukari slipped a step back, her arms crossed in front of her face as the intense flash dried out the shadows. Junpei threw himself across the last of the gap, into his friend, and the bolt struck his back between the shoulders.

Yukari fell messily in the ruined grass, soaking the sleeve of her jacket with red as she broke the placid face of a puddle with her fall. She recoiled from the cold thickness of the liquid, tearing the reflection of the moon. Something had run into her from behind. She looked back and—

"Junpei!"

Even after the dash of agonizing whiteness passed, Junpei's teeth still seemed to hop and buzz in his mouth, and he staggered a step, his body jolting and moving without him—how the hell did Akihiko take hits like this and not flinch?

"Ow-wow!" he grunted. "I was not ready for that." Junpei slumped, and the bones of his arms rattled with tremors. A shadowy web of ruptured nerves coursed down his left arm and lightly along his neck, the scarring of the lightning strike.

"You fucking worm!" his 'shadow' growled, shaking furiously in the tangle of the monolith.

"Junpei!—" Yukari called, moving a step toward him.

"Go get him," Junpei told her between his teeth. "I'm—he's—right there, go fucking get him. You know what to hit him with!"

She knew, and Yukari pulled back from him reluctantly. But the tower did not hesitate, and already, it drew itself up for another strike.

"No, you don't!" Yukari said, her evoker at her forehead. "Help me!" And the shot tore through her, the golden wings of Isis gleaming eerily in the still face of the monolith as the windstorm of Garudyne scattered the clouds and tossed around the steele. Its structure liquefied, flopping and spinning within the twister. The shattered face and melted body of Junpei's shadow bent and blurred, flushing into the stream of the tower. The wind faded, and the monolith burst into a fury of hands, twitching and clawing at nothing, as the shadow deflated on the ground.

"Do it again!" Yukari urged, evoking the winds again with another shot. She paused, her breath heavy with the exertion, and the shadow struggled on its mess of arms and collapsed again, too battered to move. The smelting torso of Junpei's shadow twitched in the knot, its golden eye gone dark as the remaining red eye slid into its cheek.

"You—_you_—" it muttered in a gasp. "_Fuck_ you! Fuck _both of you_—" Its mouth dripped down its chin, and the jaw collapsed abruptly into the muck.

"Still talking? I'll—" Yukari threatened, evoker at ready. The tangled shadow concerted its arms and snapped at her, shoving her back into Junpei before it tore around like lightning, lugging its dribbling body with it into the tiny face of a television. It twisted back to rasp at them, the pointed fingers condensing into fangs, and dived, sucking its wet bulk inside the TV.

It dragged the Dark Hour behind it, the dead greenness leaking down from the sky and draining away through the TV set. The moon, newly milk-white, pulled away into the sky and faded in the rising light of dawn. Birdsong lifted up from the woods crowded on the edges of the yard, and Junpei groaned under Yukari.

"Sorry," she said, still shaken up from the shove, and pulled off. A morning mist rose around them, and in the gray light, Junpei looked worse than he had all night, the tremendous, branching scar spraying the length of his arm now and darkening a corner of his face. Yukari frowned at the damage and glanced down. "You idiot."

"Like you were gonna take that hit?" he asked roughly. "S'not a video game." He didn't sit up and let his head fall back on the ground, the grass curling soft and dewy against his face, but then, he coughed hard with all of his lungs and chest, and Yukari winced. She looked within herself once, feeling out the edge of Isis's power and how close she was to that limit. She put the mouth of her evoker to her forehead again and fired. Isis manifested as a pale phantom, sunlight drifting through her, in a final Diarahan, mending Junpei's wounds and buffing out the lightning-bolt-shaped scar sketching his arm and shoulder. Junpei sat up, shaking off the last of the dizziness.

"Thanks. You gonna heal you?" he asked, and she felt his gaze rest on the stretch of collarbone left exposed by the jacket where the graying bruises of her shadow's hold glared out alongside her skin.

"I used up what I had left on you," Yukari said, righting the hoodie over the wound. "It's not so bad anyway."

"Battle scars," Junpei joked as he stood up. "That Zio thing was cool-looking, but I'm kinda glad it's gone. Not so hot with that."

Yukari smiled, pulling the cuffs of the jacket over her hands.

"Hey, Junpei," she started. "I'm—I want to tell you I'm—" She stopped, absorbed in looking at her hands as she turned them over, her palms out and beginning to shake. He caught her hands suddenly and held them still.

"Hey, it's okay," Junpei said. "It's over, it's okay—" He said it, but her brain or her heart or both wouldn't believe it, and Yukari's eyes began to burn.

"But—but all those things—all those things you heard, they—" Yukari stopped again, her voice cracking as she broke his hold, covered her nose with her hands, and pressed her fingers to the corners of her eyes, catching the warm trickle of tears. "They were—they were—"

"I—I know they were true," he said slowly. "You—you heard a lot of true stuff about me too. It's—"

"But—but—no—" she said, hunching over. Sobs hitched in her throat, and her shoulders shivered as she lost the will to contain it anymore. She dropped her hands and finally cried. "I'm sorry—"

Junpei opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and he picked up the front of her hoodie and dabbed her cheek, brushing up the tears.

"I—I haven't got anything else," he said uselessly. He dropped the hoodie and got the tears from the other cheek with a smudge of his thumb. "You don't need to cry—" Yukari blinked, new tears sliding through the streaking of Junpei's thumb and a fresh sob on her breath, and sunk against his chest and clung to him.

"I—I thought about that," Junpei said into her hair as he carefully wrapped one arm around the small of her back and the other across her shoulders; she trembled. "But Minato—Minato said you were a little weird about hugs."

"I just don't like _getting_ them," Yukari mumbled, her face buried in his shirt. "It's—not—personal."

"Oh, okay." Junpei's arms tightened, building a band of heat and weight across her back as the warmth from his neck, the skin there faintly prickled from the chill of dawn, lit across her cheek.

"She said that—I felt that," Yukari corrected as she blinked, and what must have been the fattest tear she'd ever cried in her life rolled along her face and caught on the edge of her chin, "I think—because I was really mad at you." On the final word, her lips slipped past the strap of his A-shirt and brushed his collar—and Junpei's spine locked. Unaware, Yukari turned her head and hid her face in the crook of his neck, a tear or two streaking, and very slowly, very subtly, she shook against him—and his nervousness suddenly melted. This was Yukari, his friend, in a place neither of them had ever seen before, in a place more alien than Tartarus, than the Dark Hour.

"Heh," Junpei chuckled, trying to lighten the oppressive air. "I'm always making you mad—"

"No. I was mad—I was mad you just left, like that, without even telling me you were going," she explained around her tears. Her voice lifted, shook, and then rebuilt itself on a tearful fierceness. "You know, you remember, it wasn't that long ago, me, you, and him, we were all in class 2-F together, the three of us, we started this, this _thing_ we have to do, the three of us—and—now, now, we're," she paused, and her voice grew forlorn. "We're apart. And we never—we never got to say good-bye. S-sometimes, sometimes, I think, that back in that weird place, in that Abyss, the only reason I wanted to open that stupid door, and—and go back, was so I could say 'good bye'—really tell him 'good bye'—but I can't—so—and then, everything and last summer happened—" Yukari's tears dried and her crying finally eased, and she pushed back against him. "And we're apart now, and—not just us and him."

Junpei let her go, releasing her and dropping his arms to his sides again. Yukari sniffled, not wanting to even remember what she had just committed to the air. Even all the things her shadow said hadn't left her feeling so, so—_vulnerable_.

"Thanks," she said anyway in a very small voice, and the living closeness and the lingering warmth of the embrace, that funnily awkward, comfortably warm, but _just too close_ feeling, put the prick of oncoming tears in her eyes again.

"Hey, anytime." And Junpei seemed to stop and think before he said, "I'm—I'm sorry I took off last winter—without telling any of you guys. I—I didn't think—" He grinned wryly. "Well, I just didn't think. After what happened last summer." The last twenty four hours brought home _hard_ to Yukari that she hadn't sat alone at that long, black table in that red meeting room in the Kirijo Spire last summer. The others had fallen away in her memory, her last fight with Mitsuru rising and blotting out everything like a brilliant, painful star, but they filtered back now. Suddenly, she could remember Fuuka sitting at her right and Junpei at her left with the vase of explosively red roses between the three of them and Akihiko.

Yukari sighed and said, "Last summer. I think I don't blame you anymore."

"It still doesn't make what I did okay. I should've—" he trailed off suddenly, a clarity occurring to him. "Yuka-tan, we don't gotta fight together to stay friends, y'know? And of everybody in S.E.E.S., Tartarus or no Tartarus, we'd be friends anyway—you and me, and him. Class 2-F represent."

She giggled lightly, her eyes clearing and her face a little less dismally pink. A bright ray of sunlight broke over one of the refrigerators and slashed across the yard.

"Yeah," she said. "We would. We should—catch up again. It's been…a really long year."

"Junpei-kun! Yukari-chan!" Fuuka's voice sung through the silence, through the chorus of birds and crickets, and she appeared from the mist, waving with her braid falling over her shoulder. She was smiling, and her smile infected Yukari too, and she rubbed out the last of her tears.

But Fuuka stopped at her side, her face tensed and her smile falling as her eyes met Yukari.

"Oh!" Her hand went to Yukari's shoulder. "You're crying—what happened?"

"We—we kinda had a close call out here," Junpei said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"A close call?" Fuuka echoed. "Are you all right—"

A motorcycle cut the silence of the junkyard, and all eyes pulled to the mouth of the dirt road roping into the e-dump as its rider pulled up. He braked, cut his engine, and his dust had barely settled when he stood up from his bike. The man stretched up taller than any of them in black slacks and a deep red, collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He wore riding gloves, black, and a matching tie, knocked half over his shoulder from the ride. He set the off-kilter tie to rights casually and pulled off his helmet.

"…Suou-san?" Fuuka asked. Yukari squinted in the morning light, the man certainly _looked_ like Katsuya Suou with his red hair and complexion, but the rider just seemed too tall. He wore his guns (actually) differently than in her memory as a black harness crossed over his shoulders with a handgun in a dark holster tucked at each side. Katsuya had favored a compact, classic, and fashionable utility: a single gun in a simple, leather holster hung at the belt.

"_Tatsuya_ Suou," the rider corrected. "We haven't met."

"Oh, it's nice to meet you, Tatsuya-san," Fuuka said. "We know your brother—"

"I know."

"I'm Yukari Takeba," Yukari said, pushing the conversation over the rough answer. "This is Fuuka Yamagishi, and—"

"Junpei Iori! What are you doing out here in the sticks?"

"That doesn't matter," Tatsuya said, collected and curt. "Where is Kirijo-san?"

"They—she exited the TV world somewhere in town," Fuuka said and folded her hand over her chest, her voice entreating. "She accomplished her mission; we recovered Labrys. Please tell Nanjo-san—"

"I'm sure he already knows," Tatsuya said. "I moved out as soon as the Dark Hour fell." He took a seemingly conventional touchscreen phone from the pocket of his slacks, but its screen brimmed with foreign apps. A fleeting touch brought up a green meter positively ecstatic with data as Tatsuya stepped experimentally into the yard. "The Dark Hour's circumference took in most of the region, but this place was the centre." He glanced back at his bike. "I ran out of battery before I could reach you."

He stopped, his eyebrows quirked and his gaze, heavy and perplexed, on the twisted heap of the Kirijo limousine. It cooled in the morning light, a rainbow of gasoline rimming the still surface of a puddle beneath a crushed wheel.

"What happened to the car."

"It didn't make it," Junpei said.

Tatsuya touched out of his meter, moved through a few screens on his phone, and made a call.

"This is 19," he said. "I need a car at the Yasoinaba centre. Yes, I know there is one in the area. It won't respond to satellite connections. There is a reason for that." He paused to listen. "Thank you." Then, he turned to them. "Another car is on its way." He picked up the helmet from between the handle-bars of his bike and held it out to Fuuka. "But you'll ride with me. I need to speak with Kirijo-san; I assume you can tell me where she is."

Fuuka nodded hurriedly.

"Good. We will go once the second car gets here."

"Uh, yes," Fuuka affirmed again and took the helmet, glancing at Yukari and Junpei and back at Tatsuya again. He missed or ignored her darting look, stepped back around the smashed limousine, and returned to his phone.

"I'm sending you the K-meter data," Tatsuya said deadpan to his unknown listener. "Yes, it is off the charts. I've never seen it anything like it either. The intensity levels should match samples taken in Tatsumi Port, but the patterns look—_different_. Yes, Dr. Saitou, I understand you're excited about that. I need you to calm down and authorize an immediate sweep of this area—Excellent. I sent my coordinates with the K-meter data-link. Have a good morning too, doctor." He hung up and looked coolly at the trio.

"I will need your Operative numbers for the case report—"

"We're unofficial," Yukari interrupted. Around them, the morning grew warm and strong as the sun lifted over the mountains and filled the valley.

"I see," Tatsuya said, and then his lips twitched a bit as if he thought about smiling. "I was unofficial for a while too. I finally got my Operative number last winter."

"But your number is—" Yukari stammered. After all, '19' was awfully close to '1' and '0' for someone so—so—_new_.

"The numbers don't mean anything," Tatsuya told her plainly. "But I can relate, to your status."

"What—what took so long?"

"My persona can be—unreliable. On a good day, Apollo answers most of the time. But for the rest of the time, I have this." Tatsuya paused to pull not his gun but his evoker from its harness. She hadn't recognized the other evoker at first with its coal-colored finish and slim build. The only feature that might distinguish it from any standard-issue law enforcement pistol was the no-nonsense identifying inscription along its barrel, _'SHADOW OPERATIVE 19 – SUOU TATSUYA,'_ and the Operatives' emblem on the stock.

"Ever worry about shooting yourself by accident with the other one?" Junpei interjected.

"No, my evoker has my name on it," he said and spun the evoker, looking on it fondly, like a long and favored friend. "My brother resisted my membership in the Nanjo network for five years," he continued, his eyes not leaving the gun. "He only relented in the end because I experience the Dark Hour. The others can't."

"Why not?" Fuuka asked.

"The Dark Hour is strange," Tatsuya answered. "Having the 'potential' does not guarantee entry. We don't know why. We had persona users in the Nanjo network who could sense the Dark Hour, and knew when it occurred, but only I was conscious through it. My brother believes I experience it at all because I was traumatized in some event I no longer remember." Tatsuya looked away from the evoker finally, as if his personal admission surprised him (but in an unimpressive way), and holstered the gun again. "I don't know if he's right, but that doesn't matter now. I've forgotten whatever it was."

"I'm sure you'll remember someday," Fuuka said optimistically, and Tatsuya seemed to grin, small but earnest.

"I don't know if I need to," he said and returned to his original subject. "Since we merged with Kirijo, several of the old Nanjo network users have learned to enter the Dark Hour—but it doesn't always work, and they get sick in there. So, wait it out, and there will be a place for you."

A smile pulled at the corners of Yukari's lips—a place for them, a place for _her_, alongside Mitsuru and everyone else. _'We don't have to fight together to stay close,'_ she thought, but at the same time, that was so much of who they all were together. These evokers, these guns, silver and inscribed, had become more than just weapons.

"It's coming," Tatsuya said, glancing ahead up the road where a limousine slid quietly through the countryside, patches of morning sun and clouds floating over the midnight finish. It met them by the lamp-post at the front of the yard, where the road passed off into walls of dead televisions and empty refrigerators. Glass crunched in the grass as the driver's door opened and out stepped a young man in a white suit and cap, the Shadow Operatives' emblem embroidered in deep blue on his pocket. He opened the passenger door for them as Tatsuya mounted his bike. Fuuka slipped his dark helmet over her hair and climbed up behind him, fitting her arms awkwardly around his waist. Inside the visor, her eyes darted nervously—from Tatsuya's back to Yukari and Junpei.

Yukari left the limo's side long enough to touch Fuuka's shoulder and smile.

"We'll catch up with you later," Yukari told her. "Call Junpei, okay?" The helmet hid Fuuka's mouth, but the reassured grin reached her eyes. Tatsuya started his engine, the roar tearing the country quiet.

"You two—stay on the line!" he ordered in a shout over the noise. "And wait it out!" He kicked the stand, and the bike bolted down the country road, looping effortlessly around the limo and becoming a black and silver rocket streaking light among the rice fields.

Yukari found herself waving until her hand stilled and she climbed inside the limousine and on to familiar leathers, just the same as yesterday. Junpei followed in after her, maneuvering his phone out of his pants and shutting the door behind him in a vaguely gymnastic motion.

Then, he frowned—deeply.

A spectacular, branching crack had torn up the face of his phone. The touchscreen responded decently to his prodding, the icons and contacts hanging like flickering ghosts behind the splintered face.

"Man," Junpei said, putting the phone away, "do we get electronics insurance in that big pack of paperwork she gave us?"

"I hope so," Yukari said. "I gotta call my bank. My purse was in there." She sighed, remembering glumly that her purse, her wallet, _and_ her cellphone had probably melded into a wad of pleather and plastic mush in the ruins of the limo by now. "I've got nothing but the clothes on my back." And her evoker, lying still on the seat beside her, as if she could ever lose it.

"Ouch," Junpei said, hissing in a funny empathy. "Well, you can keep my hoodie then."

She tugged the baggy sleeves up to her elbows, the heat of the late spring morning beginning to cling even as the limo's air-conditioning rolled into the cabin.

"I was going to," she said with an airy smirk, "but thanks." The wheels turned and Yukari glanced outside, the maze of televisions receding into the grass and a light morning fog. She fidgeted with the zipper of the hoodie just for a moment, and the Kirijo's monitors gracing this limousine flickered on, boasting a new e-mail for the both of them. Junpei leaned forward, touching through the panels, and Yukari slid back against the seat, a light smile playing on her lips.

'_But no matter what happens, fighting isn't all we have_.'

* * *

El Fin

* * *

I posted this chapter to Ao3 a few hours early by accident and decided to just commit. So, with that, _Benched_ is complete! :) My lovely reviewers from last week, returning Jin and Ryuichiro Sakuraba, put me on cloud 9 with their praises. I really appreciate it! As of this evening, _Benched_ has also pulled 325 views and 230-ish individual readers. So, thank you x230-ish to all of you reading already! And thank you to all of you reading in the future!

For a day or so after I finished this, I had a Benched-shaped hole in my life, but my heart did not sit empty for long. I'm already a few thousand words into another P3 project that should be ready for posting within a Monday or two. It will be a darker, longer, and (go figure) funnier story more involved with P3's male characters. I hope, if you enjoyed _Benched,_ you will give that a look when it goes up!

I hope you've enjoyed reading _Benched. _It drove me up the wall now and then, but I really enjoyed writing it. :D

- Some Magician


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